


A Better Shape

by WhereTheMuseGoes (paintedwolf)



Category: Ice Age (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedwolf/pseuds/WhereTheMuseGoes
Summary: What if Diego had asked Manny and Sid to stay with him on Half-Peak?





	A Better Shape

**Author's Note:**

> Please be aware: this is not a happy story.  
> A few weeks ago, I wrote four lines of dialogue after reading this prompt from the IA forum on FF.net:  
>  _Scenario #22: As he lays dying, Diego doesn't make one last sacrifice and instead asks Manny and Roshan and Sid to stay with him during his final moments. How would this change the movie's ending?_  
>  I didn't think I'd ever write a full story for it, but here it is, completed in the midst of trying to write something else. I didn't fill the brief exactly- I don't actually deal with how this impacts the rest of the movie, but I did, I think, leave the ending ambiguous enough that it could turn into something happier.

_"I have been bent and broken but, - I hope- into a better shape"_

 - Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

* * *

"We were some team, huh?"

"Were? Come on, we're still a team."

“I’m uh, sorry I set you up.”

“Ah, you know me. I’m too lazy to hold a grudge.”

Sid bent over and placed Pinky gently onto the snow in front of him. Diego looked into wide, innocent eyes as the little guy touched the top of his nose with a confused gurgle. Diego knew he knew what was happening- the kid had always been smart for such a young cub. He was sorry for it. Sorry for whatever innocence might have been lost when he took his mother away.

“Hey, knock it off, Squirt. You gotta be strong. You have to take care of Manfred and...Sid. Especially Sid.”

“Come on, you can lick this. You’re a _tiger._ Look, I’ll carry you. Come on, what do you say?”

Diego didn’t have the strength to laugh at the idea of Sid attempting to carry him, but he appreciated the offer, even if it had been made out of denial.

He _knew;_ he could feel it. He was dying.

Soto wasn’t the alpha of their pack for nothing; Diego got in his way, he took him down. He had been aiming to kill when he leapt at Manny. He’d known it when he’d jumped in front of the mammoth. He didn’t regret it.

He just...didn’t want to die alone.

“Please don’t...don’t leave me.”

“It’s okay, buddy,” said Manny, “We’re right here.”

“I’m sorry...I shouldn’t...I don’t have any _right…”_

“Hey, stop it. Of course you do.”

“But the kid-”

“It’ll be fine. We’ve got time. We’re _not_ leaving you.”

Diego shouldn’t have asked. Hated himself for doing it, almost more than he hated himself for bringing them here in the first place.

But it hurt, more than anything he’d ever felt, and- since he was dying anyway- he could admit to himself that he was scared. He didn’t want to die alone. More than anything, Diego had never wanted to be alone.

He had been for most of his life. Surrounded by kin though he was, they never understood him. They never knew who he really was, never expected or cared for anything other than that he could hunt, and track, and kill when necessary for the good of the pack. Never once considered that he might be more than just a predator, that no matter how his heart hurt for those they lost to the humans, that he never wanted revenge the way Soto did.

No one knew how it stole his breath away in the night, when he saw her behind the lids of his eyes- the human that he had killed. Never knew how hard he had to push away the dread the closer they got to Half-Peak, even before Manny and Sid became more than just a means to an end, an obstacle hindering his goal of executing Soto’s wishes. A chance to earn his alpha’s respect, and the respect of his other pack mates, and prove to them that he _could_ when they were all betting that he _couldn’t._

Diego had long since given up hoping for more than that- even if it meant he had to cast aside his morals and take a path he’d never have chosen for himself. He’d never planned on becoming attached to the kid. Wrong though he knew it was, it would’ve been easier if he hadn’t. He’d have had to give away a piece of himself if he _did_ hand the kid over to Soto in the end, but he could live with that. At least, that’s what he told himself. It was worth it. He didn’t want to die, or be cast out and left alone if he failed. If he’d _been_ alone, he would’ve convinced himself of these things easily enough.

Then Manny had saved his life, and left Diego wondering if the mammoth knew just how unworthy he was of such an act, as he lied to them, and led them day by day to their deaths.

When this had started, it had been one life. One baby’s life in exchange for half-a-dozen sabres. Then one became two, and two became four, because Diego _had_ to be the over-achiever, had to lay Oscar’s smug slights to rest by telling him he was bringing them a mammoth. Had to take some small amount of pride in seeing how even his harshest critic seemed impressed by the magnitude of Diego’s duplicity.

It was harder when he returned to the edge of the firelight, and was reminded, swiftly, that Manny wasn’t just some random mammoth. Despite his efforts, he cared for Manny; even- in some odd, inexplicable way- for Sid.

Diego supposed it was only right- that he would pay some price eventually for the things he’d done. At least he could take solace in knowing he wasn’t going to die a villain- maybe not precisely a hero, but at least not a villain. And, by some miracle he probably didn’t deserve, he wasn’t- and wouldn’t be- alone.

He only regretted that he was sure he and Manny and Sid could’ve become friends, had things turned out differently. At best, all he could hope for was that they got the kid back in time- even delayed by Diego’s selfishness- and that Manny and Sid wouldn’t part ways when it was over. His instincts told him that Manny needed a friend, even if that friend would take the form of an annoying, occasionally tactless sloth. It was too prideful to imagine _he_ could make a difference, were he to be there beyond these last few hours.

He thought perhaps he should say something to them, to this odd pair of herbivores, and the pudgy little human child that had changed his life in the course of a few days, but Diego was tired, and it was becoming harder by the minute to string together a coherent thought.

He tried anyway.

“Manny, I- I’m…”

“Don’t,” said the mammoth firmly, “You don’t need to say anything, okay?”

A second later, Manny’s warm trunk wrapped around his paw. He wished he could hold back, do something other than _look_ at him. He was little more than a brown, fuzzy smudge across Diego’s vision now.

“You don’t have to say anything, Diego. Just...just know that, that you were brave. What you did was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. You saved us, all of us, and... _thank you._ ”

“That’s what...you do...in a herd,” said Diego. It took almost all the little energy he had left, but he thought he had found the right words. They weren’t much, but they were right, and the best he could give.

Time fell away from him. Diego didn’t know if it was hours or minutes, but the pain was gone now, and he knew somewhere in the back of his head that was a bad thing. Manny still had his trunk wrapped around his paw- the only warm spot Diego could really feel. Somewhere along the way, Pinky had come to be curled in the crook of his neck, and his head...his head seemed to be lying in Sid’s lap, with the sloth’s hand resting between his ears. It...wasn’t the worst way to go.

“Thank you,” he mouthed, the words void of sound as he looked to Manny one last time. He blinked, couldn’t open his eyes again.

“We’ll never forget you, buddy. Okay?” said Sid.

It was the last thing he heard before his world went black.


End file.
